Hi all,

I recently received an email from lap-publishing wanting to publish my Master's thesis. They knew my name and title of the dissertation so it isn't complete spam, but I am wondering if anyone has any experience with them and what they do.

Are there any pros and cons to publishing the dissertation with them? I never tried to publish it myself on account of my circumstances at the time and a lack of time to edit it since then!

Hi,

Well, I received an email form them too yesterday offering to publish my dissertation - I guess they didn't figure out from their search that what they were offering to publish has already been published in a journal. I conducted some research on them and just googling them turned up a lot of negative reviews and information regarding them. They do not peer review the submissions - they print it exactly as it is, hence the credibility of the research is greatly reduced due to this. Furthermore, your research is not likely to be accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed journal as lap-publishing obtains the copyright. From what I came to know, they do turn your thesis into an attractive book and sell it for around 100 dollars on Amazon, but so far, no author has yet received any royalties from this sale as no one has bought their books. Bottom line - publishing your thesis with them is not likely to enhance your academic career - rather it may be questioned due to their lack of credibility.

I don't have a direct experience of dealing with lap-publishing, but a colleague of mine published her Master thesis with them a few years back (she was in history). She didn't finish her PhD yet, but I suppose that it might have helped her to get college funding if nothing else.
I think that the main point is how publishable your thesis is, what field you are in and whether getting your thesis published would help your academic career. There are a lot of theses that, although very good, won't be very suitable for a publication.
I don't think that you can expect to earn money through an academic publication, but I agree with the post above on the importance of the peer review process. If you have the possibility to get your thesis published as a peer-reviewed book/ article, that is going to make a huge difference in your CV.

Don't - it's one of the multiple imprints of the VDM Verlag! Or at least have a read of this first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing and see whether you really think this is something that will enhance your career. I think when they were caught publishing Wikipedia articles as 'books', they really lost any residual credibility they had. If your MA thesis is genuinely publishable, then you probably need to look at rewriting the key findings in the form of a journal article.

Thanks for the replies everyone, very informative.

I will not submit the MSc dissertation. Maybe if I get some time I will try to edit it and submit it to a real journal!